At a press conference this morning in the under-construction space, Governor Cuomo announced that major work has begun on transforming the James A. Farley Building into the state-of-the-art, 225,000-square-foot Moynihan Train Hall. Along with the news that the $1.6 billion project will create 12,000+ construction jobs and 2,500 permanent jobs, come new renderings of the station, showing more exterior views and looks at the 700,000-square-foot shopping and dining concourse. — 6sqft
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Am I the only one who finds this particularly uninspiring?
Sure, impressive custom glass vaults draped across the courtyard.... "be sure to tell the rendering department to cast rays of sun beaming through to evoke the old station!"
The same old story here. Through the veil of a disingenuous rendering remains the fact that this is banal architecture with no soul. If you want that kind of atmospheric affect, you cannot have that orgy of glass across the ceiling. If you want an orgy of glass across the ceiling, then for god's sake, do so with a little more harmony between truss, glass, and building.
The old Penn Station had two primary monumental spaces with distinct and contrasting character, but they were both harmonized under a single language from vault to floor. As in Grand Central, it is less about the glass and quantity than it is about how the glass is framed, and how the frame relates to the architecture.
These renderings show a hodgepodge of unseemly parts. Take the atrium and glass ceiling out of the equation and it might as well be the same garbage you have in the current Penn Station. An improvement to be sure, but a sad reminder of the general state upon which our profession has found itself. Some will argue its a lack of budget, but I refuse to believe this is the best we can do.
You are not alone. Its basically a shopping mall with an atrium.
Cuomo even got the detail of the marble cake in that rendering, what a perfectionist that guy is.
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